The Most Disqualifying Thing About Graham Platner Isn’t What You Think

Maine’s Mamdani has had better days. Faced with new allegations about his personal life, U.S. Senate candidate Graham Platner — the far-left Democrat with the infamous Nazi tattoo — is fighting for political survival in a neck-and-neck race against incumbent Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME).

According to The New York Times, several women who dated Platner describe the candidate as “disturbing” and “intimidating.” One ex-girlfriend claimed he “could be rough with her.” The accusations are enough to prompt even senior Democrats to express reservations, despite Maine offering a pathway to Senate control. Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) — a Platner supporter — spoke out, “The behavior described in the New York Times story was wrong and toxic.” Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) called the allegations “disturbing” if true.

These are not Republican talking points. To quote a senior Democratic Senate aide, “Everyone is apoplectic.”

Now, I am not one to judge a man based on allegations alone. Platner can take it up with God. We are all flawed, and political candidates often deeply so. Nor am I one to hold politicians to some lofty standard of moral decency and ethical conduct. Elected officials are public servants, but they don’t need to be role models. Inspiration can be found elsewhere.

But Mainers are missing the point. What matters most in this situation — in any election — is Platner’s worldview, which is his most disqualifying attribute even after the New York Times bombshell. For a candidate like Platner to resonate so much in Maine, a state near and dear to my heart, is at once disturbing and disheartening. Maine voters are doubling down on Platner politics that make Janet Mills look like an establishment Republican.

Platner is a self-proclaimed “communist” who believes that billionaires shouldn’t exist. He has supported using deadly violence against political opponents, dismisses “all” police officers as “bastards,” and believes that rural white Americans “actually are” racist and stupid. This comes from an oyster farmer in Sullivan, Maine — a population of barely 1,000 — who readily promotes his small-town story as a working-class, anti-establishment badge of honor.

What the Maine Mamdani fails to promote is his attendance at an $80,000-a-year boarding school, his lawyer father, or his world-renowned architect grandfather associated with a nearly $10 million real estate. As former Maine Democratic Party chairman Tony Buxton put it, “If he’s an oysterman, I’m a florist, OK? Because I raise roses and give them to my wife.”

Nevertheless, Platner rails against America’s “billionaire economy” in a state with one billionaire (Dexter Shoe Company heiress Susan Alfond), and he supports Medicare for All as a silver bullet. Our nation may need healthcare reform, but Platner’s vision of universal healthcare would cost Maine nearly $20 billion — more than the state’s entire budget. A federal Medicare for All plan would amount to an estimated $30 trillion to $40 trillion over a decade. On an annual basis, this means that a single government healthcare program would account for about half of the annual federal budget (roughly $7 trillion per year).

If Platner confiscated the assets of all U.S. billionaires in far-left fairytale-land, Medicare for All could be funded — for a year or two. (This is impractical on multiple levels, given that much of billionaire wealth is derived from unrealized capital gains.)

Back in reality, how do we pay for it? That part doesn’t make the final cut of a Platner campaign ad. On the conservative side, it would require a combination of a 32% payroll tax, a 25% income surtax, a 42% value-added tax, a $7,500-per-capita mandatory public premium, doubling all income tax rates, reducing non-health spending by 80%, or increasing debt to 105% of GDP.

As the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget notes, taxes on high earners and corporations alone could not finance Medicare for All. Taxes would have to go up on middle-class Mainers. How that makes the state more affordable remains unclear.

And that is just one Platner pipe dream, without even mentioning the proposed federal investments for environmental action, social justice, and other programs that would cost trillions of dollars in magic money.

On its 250th anniversary, America has many problems, but communism is never the solution. The popularity of Platner or New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani doesn’t make them pragmatic or principled.

For too many reasons to count, Mainers deserve much better than Graham Platner. But only they can disqualify him for good.

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Luka Ladan is the President and CEO at Zenica Public Relations, based in Miami, Florida.